(BBC) - Picasso's Women of Algiers has become the most expensive painting
to sell at auction, going for $160m (£102.6m) at Christie's in New
York. Eleven minutes of prolonged bidding from telephone buyers preceded
the final sale - for much more than its pre-sale estimate of $140m.

The previous world record for a painting sold at auction was $142.4m, for
British painter Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud in 2013.

The sale also featured Alberto Giacometti's life-size sculpture Pointing
Man, which set its own record. It is now the most expensive sculpture sold
at auction, after going for $141.3m (£90.6m). Both buyers chose to
remain anonymous.

(Bloomberg) - The ultra-luxury housing market is scaling new heights as
a record number of properties around the world command prices topping $100
million.

Demand for mega-mansions and penthouses has accelerated as wealthy buyers
seek havens for their cash and search for alternative investments such as
art and collectible real estate, according to a report Thursday by Christie's
International Real Estate, owned by auction house Christie's. Five homes
sold for more than $100 million last year, with at least 20 more on the market
with nine-figure asking prices, the brokerage said.

Just one home sale exceeded the $100 million mark in 2013, following four
such transactions in 2012 and three in 2011, Christie's reported.

Sales are likely to increase this year with more newly built properties
and off-market homes trading for at least $100 million, Conn said. Demand
is growing among affluent Americans and Europeans; billionaires from unstable
economies, such as Russia and Middle Eastern countries; and buyers from mainland
China, who were barred from investing overseas before 2012 and since have
snapped up houses in cities including Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York and
London, he said.

Residences currently on the market with asking prices at that level include
a $400 million Monaco penthouse, a $365 million London manor and a $195 million
estate in Beverly Hills, California, according to Christie's. France's Cote
d'Azur, a getaway for jet-setters, has homes with asking prices of $425 million
and $215 million.

(MarketWatch) - The median price for a previously owned single-family home
in the San Jose, Calif., metropolitan area just hit a whopping $900,000,
according report released Monday.

That first-quarter price was up 11.4% from a year earlier, and more than
four times the U.S. median of $205,200, the National Association of Realtors
reported. It's important to note that these price figures are for the median,
not the mean, meaning that there are as many homes that cost more as those
that cost less than these levels, whereas a mean price could be skewed upward
by a number of high-value transactions.

(CB Insights) - The worries about a bubble haven't hurt private companies
in their pursuit of getting a billion dollar valuation. In fact, through
April 13, 2015, 14 new private companies raised financing at a billion dollar
or greater valuation. To give you a sense for how crazy things are, our data
set was pulled yesterday. Today, two more were added to the club. So now,
we're at 16 unicorns (Docker and Zomato were added today).

By the time you finish reading this research brief, 2-3 more will likely
be added to the club. Yes - things are just that nuts.

Yep, things are indeed just that nuts. But they're not surprising. When the
world's central banks create trillions of dollars of new currency every year
and hand it to 1% of the population, of course the latter will start indulging
their inner Marie Antoinettes.

It's also not historically unusual. Trophy asset prices always soar at the
peak of financial bubbles. In the late 1990s tech stocks were trading for 100
times sales. In the mid-2000s lots in California trailer parks were going for
$1 million+. And in both cases penthouses and fine art set records. So in one
sense this is familiar territory.

But in another sense it's unique. Where previous bubbles were localized in
one or two asset classes and the amount of irrational wealth thrown off was
as a result comparatively modest, this
bubble is global, with every major central bank flooding its economy with
new currency. New billionaires are everywhere, and their search for trophy
properties on which to spend their mountains of excess cash is getting desperate.

John Rubino edits DollarCollapse.com and has authored or co-authored five
books, including The Money Bubble: What To Do Before It Pops, Clean
Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom, The Collapse of the Dollar
and How to Profit From It, and How to Profit from the Coming Real Estate
Bust. After earning a Finance MBA from New York University, he spent the
1980s on Wall Street, as a currency trader, equity analyst and junk bond analyst.
During the 1990s he was a featured columnist with TheStreet.com and a frequent
contributor to Individual Investor, Online Investor, and Consumers Digest,
among many other publications. He now writes for CFA Magazine.